Dracula: Chapters 1–2

I found my smattering of German very useful here; indeed, I don’t know how I should be able to get on without it.

I found that my landlord had got a letter from the Count, directing him to secure the best place on the coach for me; but on making inquiries as to details he seemed somewhat reticent, and pretended that he could not understand my German.

Finally she went down on her knees and implored me not to go; at least to wait a day or two before starting.

I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for there were many nationalities in the crowd; so I quietly got my polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked them out.

Then our driver, whose wide linen drawers covered the whole front of the box-seat—“gotza” they call them—cracked his big whip over his four small horses, which ran abreast, and we set off on our journey.

“Look! Isten szek!”—“God’s seat!”—and he crossed himself reverently.

Sometimes, as the road was cut through the pine woods that seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us, great masses of greyness, which here and there bestrewed the trees, produced a peculiarly weird and solemn effect, which carried on the thoughts and grim fancies engendered earlier in the evening, when the falling sunset threw into strange relief the ghost-like clouds which amongst the Carpathians seem to wind ceaselessly through the valleys.

One by one several of the passengers offered me gifts, which they pressed upon me with an earnestness which would take no denial; these were certainly of an odd and varied kind, but each was given in simple good faith, with a kindly word, and a blessing, and that strange mixture of fear-meaning movements which I had seen outside the hotel at Bistritz—the sign of the cross and the guard against the evil eye.

“Give me the Herr’s luggage,” said the driver; and with exceeding alacrity my bags were handed out and put in the calèche.

Then I descended from the side of the coach, as the calèche was close alongside, the driver helping me with a hand which caught my arm in a grip of steel; his strength must have been prodigious.

It seemed to me that we were simply going over and over the same ground again; and so I took note of some salient point, and found that this was so.

How he came there, I know not, but I heard his voice raised in a tone of imperious command, and looking towards the sound, saw him stand in the roadway.

As he swept his long arms, as though brushing aside some impalpable obstacle, the wolves fell back and back further still.

This was all so strange and uncanny that a dreadful fear came upon me, and I was afraid to speak or move.

When the calèche stopped, the driver jumped down and held out his hand to assist me to alight.

Was this a customary incident in the life of a solicitor’s clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner?

The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation:— “Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!”

The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice—more like the hand of a dead than a living man.

The strength of the handshake was so much akin to that which I had noticed in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person to whom I was speaking; so to make sure, I said interrogatively:—
“Count Dracula?”

The light and warmth and the Count’s courteous welcome seemed to have dissipated all my doubts and fears.

He is a young man, full of energy and talent in his own way, and of a very faithful disposition.

He is discreet and silent, and has grown into manhood in my service.

I had now an opportunity of observing him, and found him of a very marked physiognomy.

His face was a strong—a very strong—aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere.

His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion.

The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years.

For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.

The Count, evidently noticing it, drew back; and with a grim sort of smile, which showed more than he had yet done his protuberant teeth, sat himself down again on his own side of the fireplace.

“Come,” he said at last, “tell me of London and of the house which you have procured for me.”

With an apology for my remissness, I went into my own room to get the papers from my bag.

He was interested in everything, and asked me a myriad questions about the place and its surroundings.

At Purfleet, on a by-road, I came across just such a place as seemed to be required, and where was displayed a dilapidated notice that the place was for sale. It is surrounded by a high wall, of ancient structure, built of heavy stones, and has not been repaired for a large number of years.

I seek not gaiety nor mirth, not the bright voluptuousness of much sunshine and sparkling waters which please the young and gay.

I am no longer young; and my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is not attuned to mirth.

Somehow his words and his look did not seem to accord, or else it was that his cast of face made his smile look malignant and saturnine.

On looking at it I found in certain places little rings marked, and on examining these I noticed that one was near London on the east side, manifestly where his new estate was situated; the other two were Exeter, and Whitby on the Yorkshire coast.

Let me be prosaic so far as facts can be; it will help me to bear up, and imagination must not run riot with me.

Then seizing the shaving glass, he went on: “And this is the wretched thing that has done the mischief. It is a foul bauble of man’s vanity. Away with it!” and opening the heavy window with one wrench of his terrible hand, he flung out the glass, which was shattered into a thousand pieces on the stones of the courtyard far below.

The castle is on the very edge of a terrible precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything!

The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!